The text issued under the name of John XXIII on 10 March 1961, presented as a motu proprio, announces the abolition of the canonical “right of option” for suburbicarian sees and reserves to himself and his successors the free appointment of cardinal-bishops to those dioceses, invoking demographic and pastoral changes as a pretext for centralizing control within the already deformed conciliar structure. In one seemingly technical gesture of juridical micromanagement, the antipope exposes the underlying project: to re-engineer the visible structures inherited from the Church while emptying them of their Catholic substance, bending episcopal office and ancient order to the will of a revolutionary regime.

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Technocratic Remodeling of Sacred Structures as Manifest Sign of Usurpation

The document is short; its doctrinal and symbolic weight is immense.

John XXIII begins by referring to the suburbicarian dioceses as specially linked to Rome and cared for by his predecessors. He then cites:

“mutatas in territoriis illis rerum condiciones, ob auctumque valde incolarum numerum, ibidem loci facta sit postremis hisce annis difficilior Pastoralium munerum exercitatio” – “because of changed conditions in those territories and the great increase in population, the exercise of pastoral duties has, in recent years, become more difficult in those places.”

Under the guise of “pastoral difficulties” and “new norms” he announces:

“ius optionis… abrogare” – the abolition of the right of option granted by Canon 236 §3 of the 1917 Code – and declares that the nomination of cardinal-bishops to suburbicarian sees belongs solely to himself and his successors.

This apparently modest modification in cardinalatial discipline reveals the deeper anti-ecclesial logic of the conciliar sect: a voluntarist, centralizing, purely administrative handling of venerable ecclesiastical institutions as if they were movable pieces in a bureaucratic apparatus, severed from the theology of the episcopate, from the sacramental order, and from the social Kingship of Christ. It is a juridical fig leaf covering spiritual usurpation.

Manipulation of Facts: From Providential Order to Managerial Utility

On the factual level, the motu proprio pretends to be a prudent response to real pastoral challenges. Yet:

– It furnishes no concrete data, no serious canonical argumentation, no theological reasoning rooted in Tradition.
– It only gestures vaguely towards demographic growth and “difficulties” as if these self-evidently demanded a rupture with an existing canonical provision solemnly codified in 1917 and organically rooted in history.

The integral Catholic view, grounded in the true Magisterium prior to 1958, judges such a move not by its bureaucratic plausibility but by its adherence to *immutabilis traditio* (unchanging tradition) and to the theological nature of ecclesiastical offices.

Key points the text silently tramples:

– The suburbicarian sees are not decorative titles; they are historically and symbolically bound to the Roman Church and to the highest expression of the episcopal order.
– Canon law, especially the 1917 Code, is not a technocratic plaything of any reigning will, but a juridical expression of the perennial doctrine of the Church, as Pius X and Benedict XV underscored when promoting and promulgating it.
– Modifications touching the structure of the episcopate and cardinals must be measured against the divine constitution of the Church, not against the managerial needs of a self-referential apparatus.

Instead of this, John XXIII invokes the consultation of curial cardinals and then proceeds to a pure act of voluntas: *motu proprio ac Nostra Apostolica auctoritate… abrogatum declaramus.* This gesture presupposes precisely what is in question: his legitimacy and his right to tinker with structures that he is, in fact, in the process of subverting.

From the perspective of integral Catholic faith, this is not harmless housekeeping; it is one step in the progressive desacralisation and politicisation of the cardinalate and episcopate, preparing the machinery that would shortly after impose the anti-liturgical, anthropocentric, and ecumenist program of Vatican II.

Linguistic Mask: Soft Pastoralism Covering Hard Revolution

The rhetoric of the text is revealing. It bears all the marks of the new conciliar dialect:

– Vague pastoral pretexts: references to “necessitates animorum” (needs of souls) and “difficulties” with no doctrinal content.
– Absence of supernatural criteria: no mention of *salus animarum* understood as salvation from sin, hell, and error; no reference to the divine institution of the hierarchy as taught by Vatican I; no submission to the unchanging law of Christ the King.
– Technocratic neutrality: the changes are presented as if they were morally indifferent adjustments, like administrative updates in a secular ministry.

This language is symptomatic. Already before the council, the usurper speaks as a bureaucrat of a religious NGO, not as a guardian of the *depositum fidei*. There is no invocation of:

– The absolute primacy of God’s rights and the rights of Christ the King over His Church and over nations, as Pius XI solemnly reminded in *Quas Primas* (“Peace is only possible in the Kingdom of Christ”).
– The duty to preserve the organic canonical order as guarantor of doctrine and sacramental life, not as a malleable instrument of policy.

The tone stands in radical dissonance with Pius IX’s *Syllabus Errorum*, which condemns the liberal notion that ecclesiastical authority can be reshaped at will to fit “modern civilization” and state-centric or purely human criteria. Here, instead, we see the very mentality the Syllabus identified: treating the Church as a perfectible institution under the pressure of changing circumstances, rather than as a divinely constituted society bound to immutable principles.

Theological Emptiness: Juridical Voluntarism Against the Divine Constitution

On the theological level, the motu proprio is even more devastating in its silence than in its words.

1. No reference to the divine origin of the hierarchy

The Church, taught Vatican I and the perennial Magisterium, is of divine right, with her essential constitution not subject to historical relativism. Pius IX had already condemned propositions suggesting that ecclesiastical rights derive from civil concession or mutable sociological conditions (Syllabus, nn. 19, 25, 26, etc.).

The antipope’s text:

– Treats episcopal and cardinalatial configuration as if rooted simply in current convenience.
– Offers no reminder that bishops are successors of the Apostles by divine institution, not mere high administrators assignable according to political calculus.

Such deliberate omission is not a neutral lack. It manifests the very *modernist* attitude condemned by St. Pius X in *Lamentabili sane exitu* and *Pascendi Dominici gregis*: reducing sacred institutions to products of historical development and practical needs (cf. Lamentabili, nn. 52–55, 63–65, all explicitly rejecting the idea that dogmas, hierarchy, and sacraments are evolutionary constructs of consciousness and circumstances).

2. Concentration of power detached from Tradition

By abolishing the right of option in favour of a fully personalized papal nomination, the document centralizes power in a figure who is, in reality, not a successor of Peter but the initiator of a parallel structure—the “Church of the New Advent.”

– In true Catholic theology, primacy is neither democratic nor arbitrary; it is a service ordered to guarding what has been handed down (*tradidi quod et accepi* – “I handed on what I received”).
– When one who proclaims or prepares novelties against previous Magisterium claims this primacy in order to reshape offices, the act unmasks itself as usurpation, not legitimate governance.

The text betrays a purely positivist ecclesiology: what is “law” is whatever the reigning will declares. This is exactly what Pius IX and St. Pius X refused: doctrine and canonical order are not raw material for experiments in governance; they are determined by Revelation and Tradition. *Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus* (that which has been believed always, everywhere, and by all) is replaced by “what we now decree.”

3. Preparation of a pseudo-hierarchy

The suburbicarian sees and the cardinal-bishops historically signified the intimate union between the Roman Pontiff and his closest episcopal collaborators, grounded in the theology of the episcopate.

When a revolutionary regime:

– Seizes those sees,
– Adjusts their legal configuration “motu proprio,”
– And thereby secures docile instruments for upcoming doctrinal and liturgical subversion,

then that change becomes a step in erecting a pseudo-hierarchy: outwardly clothed in Catholic titles, inwardly divorced from pre-1958 orthodoxy.

According to the principles highlighted in the provided Defense of Sedevacantism:

– A manifest heretic cannot be head of the Church or hold jurisdiction (*manifestus haereticus… statim cadit* – “a manifest heretic immediately falls [from office],” paraphrasing Bellarmine).
– Public defection from the faith entails tacit resignation from office (1917 CIC, can. 188.4).
– A hierarchy created, promoted, and controlled by manifest heretics becomes a structure devoid of authority, even if it retains external canonical forms.

Thus, when John XXIII unilaterally refashions elements of the highest ecclesiastical structure, he does so not as a true Pope legislating within Tradition, but as the architect of a paramasonic system. The motu proprio is not merely invalid; it is the internal administrative chartering of the anti-church.

Symptom of Conciliar Apostasy: Canonical Cosmetic for Doctrinal Rupture

This brief document is a symptom, not an isolated curiosity.

1. Continuity of method with the conciliar and post-conciliar revolution

– First, adjust “technical” aspects (right of option, composition of bodies, procedures).
– Next, use the newly assembled, ideologically selected bodies to:
– Convene Vatican II;
– Impose a “pastoral council” whose texts contradict the Syllabus, *Quas Primas*, and *Lamentabili* while falsely claiming continuity;
– Fabricate the anti-liturgical “Novus Ordo” and an entire sacramental and ecclesiological system oriented toward religious liberty, ecumenism, and humanism.

Before one can enthrone a new theology, one must secure new instruments. This motu proprio is precisely that: a reconfiguration of instruments in the hands of innovators.

2. Negation of the Kingship of Christ in practice

*Quas Primas* teaches that Christ’s rights must govern:
– Individuals,
– Families,
– States,
– And the Church’s own laws and public life.

By contrast, John XXIII’s text:

– Treats ecclesiastical governance as a self-contained administrative sphere, self-justified by “circumstances” and “needs” without explicit submission to the already defined doctrinal framework.
– Prefigures that laicist and humanistic mentality by which the conciliar sect later reconciles itself with “modern civilization” in direct defiance of the Syllabus’s condemnation of such reconciliation (n. 80).

Christ the King is practically absent here; what is present is the sovereign manager of a religious institution adapting its internal constitution in the spirit of modern administration. This is tacit but real dethronement.

3. Modernist ecclesiology in nuce

St. Pius X condemned as heretical the notion that:

– Dogma, worship, and ecclesiastical institutions are mutable expressions of religious experience (Lamentabili, nn. 54–55, 58–65).
– Structures can be remodeled at will to align with contemporary needs.

This motu proprio operationalizes precisely that mentality:

– It invokes empirical “changes” as decisive;
– It assumes that the answer is structural innovation rather than deeper fidelity to the divine constitution;
– It ignores the strict limits that divine right and prior definitions place upon ecclesiastical legislation.

What is left is the naked voluntarism of a regime that believes it may transform every inherited form to fit a new agenda. That is modernism applied to canon law.

Silence as Indictment: Absence of Supernatural Criteria

The gravest accusation against this document is its silence.

It does not mention:

– The salvation of souls in the sense of deliverance from sin, error, and eternal damnation.
– The obligation of bishops to defend the integral faith against heresy and modernism.
– The unchangeable nature of the Catholic religion, of which their offices are servants, not masters.

Instead, we find:

– Concern for efficiency and pastoral logistics,
– Appeal to the advice of those already enmeshed in a compromised Curia,
– Assertive abrogation of a law that expressed a previous, organic understanding of cardinalatial dignity.

This silence is not accidental. A true Pope, in touching venerable institutions, surrounds any alteration with theological grounding, tying it explicitly to the perennial teaching, as seen in genuine acts of Pius X or Pius XI. Here, there is only managerial prose.

In the light of Pius X’s warning that modernists disguise their subversion behind “pastoral” and “practical” pretexts, such a style becomes itself probative. *Tacere de supernaturalibus, clamare de utilitate* (to be silent about supernatural things, to shout about utility) is the method of apostasy.

Instrumentalizing the Cardinalate: From Witnesses of Tradition to Agents of Revolution

The abolition of the right of option and the full papal control over suburbicarian appointments functions concretely to transform the cardinalate:

– From a college organically tied to certain sees and traditions,
– Into a body more easily packed with men ready to endorse the upcoming council and its novelties.

Given:

– The doctrine, as recalled in the Defense of Sedevacantism file, that heretics cannot wield true jurisdiction in the Church;
– The historical fact that John XXIII openly promoted condemned ideas: ecumenism contrary to the Syllabus, optimism about “modern man,” and the very opening to “aggiornamento” that Pius X had denounced as modernist evolution;

it follows:

– That the episcopal and cardinalatial “appointments” carried out under his regime are at best juridically non-binding in the Church of Christ, and at worst part of the construction of a counterfeit hierarchy.
– That reforms like this motu proprio do not modernize the Church; they retool the stage on which an anti-church will act.

Those pretending to be traditional Catholics who accept the conciliar sect’s hierarchy or who treat its antipopes as if they were true Popes ignore the logical consequence: if a manifest heretic cannot be Pope, his structural manipulations are not exercises of the keys, but movements of a usurper. The more he replaces organic legal bonds with personalistic control, the more he reveals the nature of his project.

Against Liberal Illusions: Divine Law Is Not Optional

This text also collides head-on with the anti-liberal doctrine reaffirmed by the pre-1958 Magisterium:

– Pius IX rejected the idea that the Roman Pontiff should “come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Syllabus, 80).
– Pius XI in *Quas Primas* denounced secularism and the exclusion of Christ from public and social life as the root of modern disaster.

Yet John XXIII’s action and underlying mentality show:

– Willingness to reshape ecclesial structures according to the same liberal and historicist logic that shapes modern states and organizations.
– Absence of any robust assertion of the immutable kingship of Christ over the Church’s own juridical being.

Where the true Magisterium said: “Here we stand; we cannot bend divine constitution to the world,” the antipope silently does the opposite: he bends ancient elements to fit a program of aggiornamento. The motu proprio is a micro-level implementation of the liberal-modernist principle that Pius IX anathematized.

Conclusion: A Technical Decree as a Spiritual Indictment

Seen through the lens of unchanging Catholic doctrine prior to 1958, this motu proprio is not a minor organizational note; it is:

– A symbolic act of seizure: annexing a venerable element of the Roman ecclesiastical order into the hands of a revolutionary leadership.
– A juridical expression of modernism: assuming that law, structures, and even the close circle around the Roman See are malleable instruments of policy, instead of sacred trusts determined by divine right and Tradition.
– A preparatory maneuver for apostasy: providing the conciliar regime with a custom-formed college of cardinals and bishops, docile in reshaping doctrine, liturgy, and discipline in defiance of the Syllabus, *Quas Primas*, and *Lamentabili*.

Its pious façade cannot conceal its deeper nature. The same logic that abolishes the right of option by pure will, indifferent to the principles of the pre-1917 tradition, will later abolish the Roman Rite, dilute the faith in ecumenical “dialogue,” and enthrone man where Christ the King must reign.

Therefore, from the standpoint of integral Catholic faith:

– This document has no binding force, as its author lacked the conditions of a true Roman Pontiff.
– Its content is the juridico-pastoral mask of the conciliar revolution.
– It stands as further evidence that the structures occupying the Vatican have for decades operated a paramasonic, anthropocentric system alien to the Mystical Body of Christ, which remains where the immutable faith, sacraments, and doctrine prior to 1958 are held inviolate.

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Source:
Ad Suburbicarias Dioecesis, Litterae Apostolicae motu proprio datae ius optionis in dioecesibus suburbicariis abrogatur, X Martii MDCCCCLXI, Ioannes PP. XXIII   (vatican.va)
Date: 11.11.2025